


Spot the Difference (of Doom)

by Carisa_Ironfell



Series: The Series (of Doom) [8]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hypnosis, M/M, Memory loss due to Time Idiots, Not Canon Compliant, The Magician (Mal being a drama queen), Tommy Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22725247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carisa_Ironfell/pseuds/Carisa_Ironfell
Summary: Malcolm has been returned to his proper time and has just been hanging out being depressed. Then he gets a call.When your dead son calls and says he's about to arrive, it's time to figure out what went wrong.
Relationships: Damien Darhk/Eobard Thawne, Damien Darhk/Malcolm Merlyn, Damien Darhk/Malcolm Merlyn/Eobard Thawne, Malcolm Merlyn & Tommy Merlyn, Malcolm Merlyn/Eobard Thawne
Series: The Series (of Doom) [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1538092
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	Spot the Difference (of Doom)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer!!! Still not mine! Written by my lovely sister, wonderful person that she is. ^-^
> 
> There is a story missing between this and The B-Word (of Doom). We haven't written it out yet, but we'll post it when it is done and rearrange the series order accordingly. Please be patient!
> 
> There are mentions of our OCs, who are teleporting meta-humans of a sort. It's only kind of important, on account of one of them having rescued Tommy before he died. They don't actually appear, and no one really asks any questions about them.

Malcolm Merlyn stood in his apartment. He blinked, feeling like he’d forgotten something important, but nothing came to mind.

“Guess it wasn’t that important,” he said to himself. There wasn’t much point in looking around for answers; inspecting his home too closely always made him depressed. Not to mention, it made him want to go out and kill the people who were responsible, and his own name was at the top of that list.

Sighing, he sat in his armchair and poured a drink. The TV played, a news program about Damien Darhk, who had just been killed on live TV by Green Arrow. Malcolm scoffed.

The idiot. He wasn’t sure if he meant Darhk, with his world-ending plan, or the Arrow for breaking his vow to Tommy’s memory. Malcolm paused with his glass half-way to his mouth. Something about Darhk, laying on the ground, stirred something in his memory. For a moment, he expected a crackle of red lightning.

What nonsense. Lightning wasn’t red. The strangest color he’d ever seen it in was gold, sizzling around the Arrow’s speedy friend from Central City. He drained his glass in one gulp and poured another drink.

Malcolm’s phone rang in the morning, waking him. He rubbed his neck, which ached from the odd position he’d fallen asleep in. He was getting too old to sleep in chairs, even with his League training to ignore pain.

“Hello?” he answered, unsure who was calling. Thea hated him and all his old business associates thought he was dead.

“Dad, I need to talk to you,” Tommy said.

Malcolm dropped the phone.

There was no way he’d just heard his son’s voice. Tommy was dead, had been for years. Malcolm had failed him and gotten him killed with the Undertaking. All his good intentions meant nothing when it had killed his son.

He picked up the phone, hating the quiver in his fingers.

“Listen, I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, but it is in very poor taste,” he snarled. “Never try to get to me using the memory of my son again, or you’ll learn exactly why the League of Assassins called me the Magician. Do I make myself clear?”

“Well, you’ve certainly had enough to drink,” the voice on the phone said. Damn it, it still sounded like Tommy. “You’re right, though. This is not an ‘over the phone’ kind of talk. I’ll come over.”

The line clicked and went dead. Malcolm stared at his phone in a sort of enraged bemusement. Who would be stupid enough to impersonate Tommy?

He didn’t care. When they showed up, he’d make good on his promise. Then he’d get something for his hangover.

Luckily, Malcolm’s weapons were still in good condition. He might have nothing left after repeatedly destroying his life with stupid plans, but Malcolm did still have the discipline the League had instilled. He might be turning into a drunk, but he would keep his weapons better than he kept himself.

He splashed water on his face, brushed his teeth to get rid of the nasty taste, and settled back in his chair with his favorite sword to wait for his dead son to arrive.

Forty minutes later, the door rattled and opened. Malcolm gripped his sword but controlled the surge of rage that accompanied his suspicion that someone was impersonating his son.

Tommy came in, holding a cardboard drink carrier with a paper bag balanced on it. He looked older than Malcolm remembered, as if he had aged the last few years rather than being dead.

“Dad, if you keep drinking like this, I’m going to have to stage an intervention,” Tommy said, dropping the bag on the coffee table and handing Malcolm a cup of coffee. “I know this is going to be a big talk, so I got coffee and scones from that overpriced place you always went to. Now, having something non-alcoholic before I turn you over to Ollie and Lance.”

“Tommy?” Malcolm asked hesitantly. “Is it really you?”

Now that he was face-to-face with this person, he was rapidly losing his conviction that it was an imposter. None of the illusionists in the League knew what kind of scones he liked.

Tommy turned from the window, where he had been pulling back the curtains and blinds. Malcolm expected a sneer of derision and a confession, maybe, or cold hatred from the son who had every right to feel it. Instead, Tommy’s face held compassion and a touch of pity.

“You’ve really been drinking, haven’t you?” he asked. “Dad, we’ve been over this. I’m really me, not some sword-wielding master of illusions. I know it looked like I died in the Glades, but someone got me out just before CNRI fell on me. You missed it on account of the ‘faking your death’ thing. And don’t ask who it was; I still don’t know.”

Malcolm set his sword aside and walked over, gently touching Tommy’s face with his non-cybernetic hand. His eyes burned and he pulled his son into a hug.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said, barely able to rise above a whisper. “It’s like a nightmare, but I swear I was awake. Yesterday, you were dead, Tommy.”

“Nope, just wishing I was,” Tommy said, patting him on the back. “Come on, Dad, pull yourself together.”

Malcolm let Tommy usher him back to his chair and took a sip of coffee. 

“All right, you wanted to talk,” he said, digging a scone out of the bag. “I really want to hear it, Tommy.”

“Right, well, mostly, I wanted to check in. Ollie told me you were walking the line again. You tried to team up with Damien Darhk until he got too crazy for you and then you bailed on Ollie instead of helping him. Dad, I thought you had given up on taking over the city plots.”

Malcolm was a bit fuzzy on that. His memories of Damien Darhk refused to gel into place. He kept getting distracted by an angry looking Sara Lance and a flash of red lightning. Maybe more coffee would help, as long as he kept it out of reach…

“I’m not taking over any city, Tommy,” he said and rubbed his face. Kept his coffee out of reach? If he couldn’t reach it, it wouldn’t help now would it?

“Good. I just have a feeling something weird is going on. I’ve been seeing this guy with orange hair hanging around the past couple of days. I guess I just wanted to make sure nobody from your past was trying to kill me.”

“Orange?” Malcolm said to himself. Once again, a memory danced at the edge of his consciousness, refusing to come fully into view. He drained his coffee and rubbed his forehead again.

“Great, you know the orange guy,” Tommy said with a disgusted gesture. “Can you do some ninja craziness before he decides to stab me?”

“He won’t. He’s…” Malcolm trailed off. “Tommy, something’s going on. I was about to say he’s a time god. Some one has messed with my brain.”

“Time god? Dad, how did you piss off a time god?”

Malcolm dug out another scone and wolfed it down. If he was right and some one had tampered with his mind, he would need a bit of food before getting to work.  
“Tommy, he’s not here to attack or kill anyone. I don’t know how I know, but I’m positive. He’s just… vindictive.”

“Vindictive? That’s awesome. Dad, I’m going to leave you to deal with the vindictive orange time god and go back to the real world where I only have to deal with death-defying ninjas. Good talk,” Tommy grumbled.

“Tommy, wait. I need your help,” Malcolm said, struggling to control a surge of panic. It wasn’t reasonable, but his brain screamed that if Tommy left, he’d vanish, and Malcolm wouldn’t see him again.

Tommy paused with his hand on the doorknob. “No way, Dad. I’m not going to help you murder a time god, no matter what the argument is. I’m not like you.”

“That’s not what I want,” Malcolm said quietly. He hadn’t even considered it, but he really didn’t plan to attack the time god. He had no idea how to go about it without getting killed. The League didn’t offer training for that kind of thing.

“I need to uncover the nature of the tampering in my brain. It’s safer to do with a helper,” he continued. “Tommy, you’re the only person in the city I’d trust to help me with this.”

“What do you need me to do?”

Malcolm blinked. Tommy had turned to face him, his jaw set with resolution. Gone was his drunken, playboy son, replaced by a capable young man Malcolm wasn’t sure he recognized. He didn’t remember what had happened, but Malcolm could guess how Tommy had undergone that kind of transformation. After nearly dying, Tommy must have gone to Oliver and gotten sucked into his crusade.

Malcolm might resent it, but clearly having a cause had been good for Tommy.

“I’m going to hypnotize myself and find the memories that have been repressed. From there, it should be obvious who did it, if it wasn’t me, and why. I need you standing by to wake me up, because it’s not safe to dig too deeply into a mind for too long.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“Then I have a serious problem,” Malcolm said and shook his head. “But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. It won’t be dangerous for you, Tommy.”

Tommy shifted his weight, clearly doing some quick thinking. “Okay, Dad. I’ll help, but I have to make a call first.”

He stepped outside, leaving Malcolm conflicted. Obviously, Tommy didn’t trust him, or he wouldn’t have tried to keep his end of the conversation private. Not that Malcolm didn’t deserve every bit of the distrust he was getting, but it still hurt that his son would go that far.

He heaved a sigh. Agonizing over past mistakes wasn’t going to get him out of this mess. He went looking for the tools he would need.

“This is weirder than I expected,” Tommy said, settling himself on the floor across from Malcolm, who ignored him. Wrapped in the robes he’d worn while training Thea, Malcolm focused on lighting the incense he’d made himself. He’d pulled every curtain in the apartment tightly closed, sending the small space into dimness.  
Four candles, placed in a square around them, did very little to provide light.

Malcolm’s phone balanced on the coffee table, with an app open to provide a measured drip of water. Malcolm would have preferred to have actual water, but he couldn’t rig it fast enough this time.

“Tommy, remember: don’t touch me. My conscious mind won’t be able to recognize you. I might hurt you out of instinct. In twenty-five minutes exactly, wake me up.”

“I know. The safe word is Nimue,” Tommy replied. “You can be more of a dork than I ever realized.”

Malcolm chuckled. “You weren’t the only one who wanted a dog named King Arthur,” he said. The wistful note unlaying the words took him by surprise.

Before Tommy could come up with a response, Malcolm closed his eyes. This wasn’t pure hypnosis, more like a combination of hypnosis and meditation. He’d only done it to himself once before, but fear and doubt would ensure his failure.

He slowed his breathing, shoved his doubts and confusion out of his thoughts, and excluded everything from his perception except the drip of water on his phone.  
The compound in his incense induced a small measure of relaxation, enough that Malcolm’s body wouldn’t distract him from his mind.

Once he felt calm and detached, Malcolm walked his memory back. Tommy’s arrival, waking up, falling asleep in his chair. He stood in his apartment, sure he’d forgotten something.

Here his mind balked. How he’d gotten there, where he’d been, none of it surfaced. There was only a white flash, like a camera going off in his face. Past that, Malcolm sat in his apartment, watching the news coverage of Damien Darhk’s death.

Red lightning slashed through the air, a draft ruffled his hair, and two men stood before him. One of them was Damien Darhk. The other, the source of the lightning, was a slim blond dressed in black.

Malcolm didn’t know him. His heart whispered he did, that the blank spot in his memory knew this man. They offered him the chance to change his past, to bring Tommy and Rebecca back. Time travel, the blond said, would somehow change everything Malcolm knew.

Of course he jumped at the chance. He’d have jumped even if he hadn’t been in the depths of desperation.

Here, his memory flickered again, shaky on the details. They traveled through time. They faced problems. Malcolm didn’t push. He waited for the memories to surface on their own, knowing that force wouldn’t get him anywhere.

Sara Lance commanded a group of time travelers who claimed to protect the timeline from tampering. That explained why he remembered her being so angry with him.

Eobard Thawne, the time traveling speedster from the future, had a plan to use the Spear of Destiny to alter reality. Malcolm hated taking orders from him. Once again, his heart protested, threatening to break his concentration. His fights with Eobard and Damien weren’t the truth, it said.

They captured a man who knew where the Spear was: Rip Hunter, currently believing his name was Phil. Malcolm tried to wake his memories, but they weren’t there. At least he was better off, able to find his own missing memories…

Eobard, always in a hurry, was trying to outrun his own nonexistence. His ancestor had changed time and now something was chasing him. Malcolm and Damien agreed to help as long as Eobard treated them like equals.

They made Rip Hunter their minion. Malcolm blinked in his thoughts as the orange time god appeared. He was Rip’s boss and very unhappy about what they had done. In revenge, he gave Malcolm a book. He learned more about speedsters than he’d ever wanted to know. Knowing had woken those old feelings of protectiveness he’d gotten when Tommy was small. For the first time in years, he had someone to care for again.

It was more appropriate than he’d thought, since Eobard reacted exactly the way a small child would: with pouting and complaints.

Malcolm hated Damien Darhk. Hated him so much it looped around and linked itself to his nurturing streak. Bit by bit, he fell in love with both of them: the man who had just died and the man who would never exist.

That was the vindictive time god’s plan, he realized.

The Spear didn’t work and they all nearly died. Malcolm watched his memories scroll past: desperate escapes, late nights, and the slow realization that it was over. Eobard knew he had to put them back in the timeline.

The pain of letting go shot through him, twisting harder than any pain Malcolm had felt before. He stood where Eobard left him, let Sara and her Legends take him back to his apartment. The lonely space seemed hollower than ever in light of what he’d lost.

They erased his memory and left him there to drown the sorrows he had in his own time, never to know the full extent of what had happened.

But Lord Simultaneous wasn’t satisfied. He promised Malcolm it wasn’t the end, that there might be hope for Damien. Then he left, leaving only a hint that Malcolm could remember and figure out what he meant.

“Nimue.”

Malcolm opened his eyes, feeling like he’d just surfaced from water. Drying tears tingled on his face. Like the last time he’d done this, the journey into his own mind had left him shaken.

“Dad. Are you okay?” Tommy asked, still sitting across from him. Malcolm still had no idea how he was alive. He hadn’t done anything to change Tommy’s fate.

“Well, it worked,” he said and had to clear his throat; the words had come out in a choked whisper. “I know who tampered with my memories.” He wiped his cheeks with his sleeves.

“That’s good?” Tommy said, the words dripping with uncertainty. Malcolm wanted to hug him and promise his son that things would get better, but he knew that Tommy wouldn’t let him.

“If you don’t want to know, you don’t have to. No one’s after me. Not anymore.”

Malcolm sat for a moment, centering himself against his stormy emotions. The League had taught him how to ignore them, but he only wanted to be able to withstand them. Maybe that was where he’d gone wrong: listening to Ra’s al Ghul rather than seeking out another way to overcome his wild emotions after Rebecca’s death.

Feeling better, he blew out the candles and opened the curtains again.

“You’re starting to scare me,” Tommy said, relocating to the couch. “Dad, I’ve seen you shake off getting shot without changing your expression. How could these missing memories unbalance you so much?”

Malcolm turned off the dripping water and shrugged. “Nothing is more painful than having love and losing it. Some of what I learned will be hard for you to accept.”

“I accepted that my best friend was a roof hopping ninja archer,” Tommy countered, a flash of humor finally slipping past his worry. Malcolm shared his smile. “I think I can handle your life.”

“Fine. I was recruited to alter reality by a time traveler from the future. Together with Damien Darhk, we were going to right the wrongs that had been done to us. Stupid, now that I think about it. The only important part of the plan was making Eobard real again.”

“Wow, I’m rethinking this,” Tommy interjected. “Time travel?”

“Yep. I’ve been to the past and the future. Switzerland, 2025, in fact. That was the start of something else. You see, we went there to get the memories of this guy who knew where to find the artefact we were looking for. That was what made the time god so angry, the guy worked for him. In revenge, he gave me a book about caring for speedsters.”

“Oh, that’s right. Speedsters can travel in time,” Tommy said, nodding. “I tried to forget about that because it was too much to think about. But when you change time, things get… messed up.”

“That’s why we were trying to alter reality. It didn’t work, though I’m not sure how. Eobard can be annoyingly vague sometimes. Anyway, this book led to me trying to take care of him. Eventually, I fell in love. The three of us worked pretty well together, until it became obvious that the timeline was getting messed up because Damien and I had been gone too long. Eobard left us for the Legends, Sara’s people, to keep more problems from coming up.”

“You fell in love with a time traveling speedster and a murderous magic guy?” Tommy asked incredulously. “Dad, that’s- I can’t even think of a word. Couldn’t you have tried dating before the Undertaking if that’s what it took to make you better?”

Malcolm rolled his eyes. “It might not have worked. I don’t understand what happened, but there was a sense of destiny about it. It might even have been Lord Simultaneous further messing with us. I don’t even know if Eobard will come back for me.”

“He’d better. I’ll kick his speedy ass if he breaks my dad’s heart,” Tommy mumbled. “Not that I really could. Ollie’s been training me, to make sure I can defend myself, but I’m nowhere close to him or Thea… or you.”

“You don’t have to be,” Malcolm assured him. “I’d prefer it, actually. There’s no reason to waste your life on violence the way I have. I’m sorry I ever did it to Thea.”  
They sat in silence for a moment.

“There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” Malcolm said. “How are you alive? I didn’t change anything to bring you back.”

“Well, like I said, someone got me out before the building fell,” Tommy said. Something in his vague gesture, or maybe his voice, told Malcolm he wasn’t being totally honest. Tommy knew who had saved him.

Much as Malcolm wanted to shower this person with gratitude, he couldn’t betray the little trust Tommy had by pressing him.

“That’s a miracle. I’m grateful they did,” he said. Tommy relaxed slightly.

“Well, Dad, we’ll have to keep talking about this later,” he said, checking his watch. “There’s stuff I have to do before work. Hang in there, okay?”

Malcolm stood and hugged him. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised.


End file.
